The present invention relates generally to the field of overlay networks, and more particularly to achieving resilience and load balancing control over data link layer (layer 2) gateways in a cluster.
An overlay network is a computer network that is built on top of another network. Nodes in the overlay network can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in an underlying network. For example, distributed systems, such as peer-to-peer networks and client-server applications are overlay networks because the nodes run on top of the Internet. The Internet was originally built on an overlay upon the telephone network, while today through the advent of VoIP, the telephone network is increasingly turning into an overlay network built on top of the Internet.